How to list channels

Introduction to /LIST

IRC has a directory of channels (rooms to chat in) built right in. The command to access this directory is called /LIST.

You can type /list (or sometimes /quote list) in to your IRC software as you normally talk. By default, this will show you any channels with chat in them in the last 20 minutes.

Advanced features

Sometimes you will want to see all channels, or only those channels that have more than some number of people in them. The /list command has some advanced features for these cases

Limit by number of users

You can tell /LIST to show you channels bigger than a certain number, by using the following syntax:

/QUOTE LIST >20 (Shows all channels with more than 20 people joined)
/QUOTE LIST <5 (Shows all channels with more than 5 people joined)

Limit by activity

You can have /LIST show channels active recently by using the following:

/QUOTE LIST M<60 (Shows all channels where someone spoke in the last 60 minutes)
/QUOTE LIST M<5 (Shows all channels where someone spoke in the last 5 minutes)

Limit by longevity

You can have /LIST show old or new channels like this:

/QUOTE LIST C<10 (Shows channels created less than 10 minutes ago)
/QUOTE LIST C>10080 (Shows channels created more than 7 days ago 60*24*7=10080)

Match by name

Finally, you can search for a channel by name, using the pattern matching syntax. In this method, a “*” (asterisk) is a wildcard:

/QUOTE LIST *geek* (Shows any channel with the word "geek" in its name)

Seeing all channels

By default, /QUOTE LIST by itself automatically is the same as “/QUOTE LIST M<20”, that is, it only shows channels where people are talking in the last 20 minutes. If you want to see everything, provide another filter to override the default like this:

/QUOTE LIST >0 (Show all channels with more than 0 people in them)

CAUTION: the list can be quite large!

Combining filters

You can do more than one search filter at the same time by seperating the arguments with commas like this:

/QUOTE LIST >20,M<20 (Show channels with 21 or more people, and someone spoke in the last 20 minutes)

/List syntax (for technical folk)

If you run
/QUOTE LIST -h
the server will remind you of the syntax for using /LIST.